ARTWORK IN OTHER MEDIUMS

In addition to tattooing, I create visual art in a variety of other mediums both for pleasure and to improve my artistic ability. I dabble in watercolor, soft pastel, graphite, and digital art. My subject matter is inspired heavily by East Asian motifs, science fiction, fantasy and nature. These themes are recurrent points of interest in my art and have captured my interest since childhood. I have continually been inspired to put my thoughts into visual form for others to enjoy.

In fact my first attempts at creating visual art were attempting to draw the Japanese SD Gundam box art as a child. Needless to say I was far from being an artistic genius as an eight year old, I quickly made a past time out of copying Marvel super heroes off of comics and sported the pencil drawings on my school binders. As a teenager I became interested in my cultural roots and made attempts to copy Chinese Dragons off of whatever print media I could find them on. It was this same fascination with Chinese motifs that led my foray into the world of tattooing. I had seen the full Japanese body suits and large dragon tattoos in gangster movies and was immediately drawn to them.

Interestingly enough the majority of my artistic development came after I started to study tattooing with “Just” Shao Gang (邵鋼）during my time in Shanghai China. Just Shao was instrumental in directing my interest into ability. Up until my apprenticeship with Just Shao, I had causally learned a few tricks from “how to” drawing books and my artwork looked like casual doodling. In addition to guiding my art study, Just Shao introduced me to the methods of using digital drawing software in conjunction with a wacom drawing tablet to do my tattoo design work.

During my return visits to Shanghai to continue my art tutelage with Just at Zhen Cang led me to add watercolor and soft pastel into my repertoire in 2012. Since then I have enjoyed opportunities to explore that both mediums have afforded me.